WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ The Inept Mage’s Infinite Regression

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Chapter 69

Demi asked.

<What exactly just happened?>

<I'm not entirely sure either, but it was probably something similar to what Rudo did.>

<Homogeny Art, you mean.>

Ethan already knew what Homogeny Art was. A spell in its own right, but also one of the fundamental principles underlying magic, which meant it appeared as a component in all sorts of others. In curse magic, for instance, homogeny bound a target to a doll made in their likeness, and driving a nail through the doll carried the pain across.

Ethan's best guess: Admoel had advanced through the Somi Palace while simultaneously constructing a mental replica of it, surveying and building in tandem. Once he reached the central hall of the Undying Church's temple and judged the model sufficient to bring the whole structure down, he activated the link.

<Not as dramatic as Rudo's method, but this one's more refined.>

<Mr. Rudo spent fifteen years. Mr. Admoel spent three minutes.>

<Some of that gap is three hundred years of magical development, but most of it is just talent.>

Stopping the Undying Church's Requiem hadn't ended the war, though.

"Martisa!"

From across the battlefield, Tsurumosa, still mounted on Keropkalon, wheeled toward them. Laken in fire-dragon form had her teeth sunk into Keropkalon's tail, and that brief opening was the only reason Ethan and the others managed to pull back at all. Even so, Laken, massive as she was, got hurled bodily to the ground.

Tsurumosa rode Keropkalon straight to the temple's wreckage and found his sister buried beneath it. Keropkalon lowered his neck while Tsurumosa used his staff to clear the rubble. Martisa had no visible wounds, so she must have cast a protective spell at the last second. Unconscious, though.

"You little— how dare you do this to my sister!"

Admoel raised his staff above his head and gave it a slow, loose wave. Not a spell. A hand signal. Retreat.

Keropkalon opened his jaws and drew breath. Through the magic sustaining the body, the temporary lungs materialized in a faint blue outline. An evil dragon's natural breath came from poison glands. Keropkalon was different. When he exhaled, black smoke poured out in a wall so thick it swallowed everything ahead. From the smoke coiling around his ankle, Ethan watched a white hand shoot out.

Boen recognized it first.

"Death-breath! Run!"

Laken blew a counter-breath and drove back against Keropkalon's exhalation. It barely dispersed. Worse, Keropkalon wrapped himself in his own breath and charged, and hundreds of hands tore out of the darkness and seized Laken from every direction.

"Knew it'd come to this."

He reached for the spellbook hanging from his belt by a chain, already flipping it open.

"→ To the musician at my ear, I ask this:
Your clapping
has kept me from sleep.
Tonight's performance,
let it end here.
Any more, and Hamar will come calling."

The incantation finished, he reached into a pocket and flung a fistful of dirt. From the clod burst moths and mayflies and grasshoppers and mosquitoes and stinkbugs and locusts, hundreds of them, filling the air all at once.

The hands reaching through the death-breath stretched toward the insects. Whether drawn to easy deaths flitting just within reach, the hands chased and grasped, and each time one closed around a bug it seemed satisfied, pulling back into the shadows.

Free of the death-breath, Laken recovered. Tsurumosa had trusted the breath to do his work and been building toward a large spell, so he had no way to stop Laken from circling behind Keropkalon. She grabbed hold of the dragon's body, wrenched him upward with both arms in one tremendous heave, and threw herself backward, launching him clean over her shoulder. Keropkalon came down neck-first. The impact threw a column of dust above the Undying Church's ruins that must have been visible from half the city away. Only Ethan recognized the move.

"German suplex!"

"What?"

"Nothing. Never mind."

The group gathered at the horses waiting nearby.

Admoel looked at Ethan and Boen.

"You two, rejoin the assault team."

"What about you?"

"Ha. Getting familiar, are we."

He jabbed Ethan in the forearm with his elbow.

"Keropkalon won't be dead from that. Tsurumosa probably isn't either. Laken, the rest of the battle mages, and I will draw him off and keep casualties down."

Boen asked, "Do you really think the two of us will be any use over there? What about staying here to support you?"

"I think you will."

Admoel looked at Ethan.

"The biggest threat was the Undying Church's Requiem. The biggest obstacle was Keropkalon. But getting through Somi Palace in time, that was simply in the realm of the impossible. The kind of thing you can't solve no matter how much you prepare. There are fights in this world that cannot be won. When I realized they'd built the palace with a barrier-labyrinth, I quietly gave up inside. But you did it. Like that strange man in the cell next to Rudo's who taught him the spell."

Ethan answered before the silence could settle.

"I got lucky."

"Right. Then use that luck for me, and look after Rivielton."

∞

Screams and shouting filled the fortress walls on all sides. Which way the fighting was turning, it was still impossible to say. Even with the Requiem silenced, plenty of walking corpses remained. Ethan and Boen pushed toward the inner fortress, avoiding the dead where they could and cutting through them where they couldn't.

When they arrived, the Byutlas Guard was waiting behind the inner gate.

The Byutlas Guard served as the royal guard of the Darun Kingdom, the northern realm where the Byutlas family held its seat. Darun saw few external threats, which left the family with military capacity to spare, often rented out to other lords. They also held a near-monopoly on gunpowder and cannon in the surrounding region, so the siege weapons they operated carried serious weight. The guard's reputation matched its equipment, and earning a place in it was no easy thing.

Ethan had half-expected to find them battered and barely holding on. Instead, clean lines and cleared ground. Every enemy already dealt with, only guards and escorts remaining.

"What's this— oh. You two."

A few of them had raised their hand cannons before recognizing Ethan and Boen, then stepped aside. One guard led them to Wica, the guard commander.

Wica stood beside what had been walking corpses, now reduced to heaps of ash and bodies, sorting supplies from a packhorse with a few of her soldiers. She passed off the rest to them and slung a single bag across her own back.

"Did you stop the Undying Church's Requiem? What about the other battle mages?"

"They're dealing with a skeletal dragon called Keropkalon. It may be heading this way."

"Ah. Keropkalon."

Wica's expression darkened. She'd clearly had suspicions about Keropkalon the moment the Eurogia family entered the war.

"…Things aren't going well on our end either."

She kept walking as she explained.

"When we arrived, Rivielton and most of the battle mages had already entered the inner fortress. A few stayed behind to hold off enemy reinforcements and the walking corpses. We finished clearing them just now, but most of my guards are alchemists, which means without magical reagents they can't do much. We were pooling what supplies were left."

"Do you have any information about the situation inside?"

"Some. The wounded battle mages who pulled back told us what they knew. Apparently there are quite a few knights in there, so the assault team has taken considerable losses. We need to get them support."

Wica pushed open the main gate.

"I'm going in. What are you two doing?"

Nothing to think over.

"Admoel sent us because he figured you'd need help. We were already planning to go. But wouldn't you be better off going in with your remaining guards rather than with us?"

"As I mentioned, the reagents I have are limited. They work well against large groups in open terrain, but inside a closed space, there's a real risk of hitting our own people. And we need soldiers and reagents left to hold the inner fortress. Originally, I was going alone."

"Alone?"

Wica patted the bag on her back.

"Full of an alchemist's weapons. An alchemist's value on a battlefield comes down to how properly and how many of those weapons you deploy. I represent Byutlas as a battle mage, which means I know how to use them right. And I've stocked up on plenty from the rest of the guard."

"…Then there's nothing more to argue. Let's go."

Wica gave a short nod and pushed through the gate.

The inside of Cora's inner fortress already reeked of blood and gunpowder. The wide entrance hall, built to receive visitors in better days, was dotted with the bodies of heavily armored knights and battle mages.

Wica gripped her hand cannon in both hands, voice low.

"We made it this far before. There was still fighting right up until a moment ago. Now it's either a lull, or it's over."

"If it's over…"

"Then the assault team failed. If they'd succeeded, they would have sent someone out. But that butcher, Rivielton, going down, I find that hard to imagine."

The entrance hall had several doors, but their modest decoration marked them as the kitchen, the cellar, a side room. Most inner fortresses ran straight from entrance to great hall. Cora's had been built on cramped ground, and the only way up was a staircase tucked in the corner.

Ethan moved toward it.

"There may be an ambush. I'll go first."

"…Fine. Boen-ssi, stand in front of me."

Ethan drew his sword and started up the stairs. Behind him came the metallic click of a door.

"Die!"

A knight in chain armor. The embroidered iron-gauntlet crest on his surcoat marked him as one of Margrave Yumuran's vassal knights. The wound in his side told the rest: he'd been hiding since getting hurt, nowhere left to go, waiting for one last shot. Striking from the rear of a battle mage advance was sound enough tactics.

The problem was who stood at the rear of their group.

Wica. Not an ordinary battle mage.

She pivoted toward the knight and swung her hand cannon in a low-to-high arc. Five kilograms of iron. Essentially a metal hammer. The steel end caught the knight's helm from below and his body lifted off the ground for a moment, then dropped flat on his back. Wica moved the way mercenaries move, not stopping just because the enemy fell. The cannon head, raised by the upswing, came back down under its own weight. A thud. The helm caved. Blood sprayed through the gap.

Wica wiped her cheek with a handkerchief and found Ethan looking at her.

"…Did you need an alchemist's weapon for that?"

"What do you mean? A hand cannon is an excellent alchemist's weapon."

"That didn't look like how you're supposed to use one."

"You're wrong. What you just saw was close-quarters hand-cannon combat technique. This is exactly how it's supposed to be used. Shall we continue?"

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